At the going down of the sun and in the morning……
It had been another bad night for the Horse.
As usual the flares had started to go up after dark. Incessant smoky flashes of grotesque orange jellyfish floating across the horizon.
Two artillery units in front and one behind had been at it all night. The shells and associated shrapnel from what was laughingly known as ‘their side’ landing closer to her than those of the enemy. The dull thud of explosions mixed with the stutter of the machine guns, the moans of the dying men who had lain out beyond the wire for the last 2 days in some stagnant crater that was forever England and then, just as daylight was announcing another round of pitiless trench warfare in a foreign field that is forever full of mud, blood and flies (she knocked another from behind her ear) it began to rain.
Dawn didn’t so much break as slither in a dark brown mist out of the horizon in front of the trench. At first she thought it might be a gas attack but realised it was just another day putting on its sodden balaclava and pulling on its mud encrusted boots. She looked over towards Slinger, sleeping like a baby, wrapped in the blue grey coat with black leather trim he had pulled off the German soldier who had hung over the wire at one end of the trench since they had arrived.
“Never mind son. If I ever get to Hamburg I’ll tell your mother that you died a hero.”
He had found an un-posted letter to Frau Heinkel, Dammestrasse 74, Hamburg in the skilfully tooled brown leather wallet in the dead German’s coat along with photographs of a beautiful dark haired young woman, a large white Alsatian dog, and a small chalet with mountains and pine forest in the background. A few hundred marks were the only other items in it.
Slinger had carefully closed the wallet and replaced it in the inside pocket of the coat, complete with all its contents.
“God he smells awful”
Slinger had covered his face with his dirty black and red bandana.
“Not surprising”, the Horse had observed
“He’s probably been gone at least a week. As far as I can recall the last German assault in this sector was a night attack on July 5th so, today being the 12th July, exactly a week. Anyway I’m surprised at you. Stealing from the dead.”
The Horse was good at precise detail like that. She knew the campaigns of the Boer, Crimean & First World War like the back of her fetlocks. Dates, casualties, exact makes of all the major weapons on both sides, depth of trenches, miraculous appearances of angels, varieties of barbed wire, ranks as signified by uniform, names of generals, military honours, decorations, distinctions, diseases –bronchial, digestive, venereal and psychological. She had it all stored away in her beautiful equine head.
“Listen. My need to keep warm and reasonably dry are more immediate than his. So please, stop being smart and righteous and help me get his body off the wire before I puke from the smell.”
Together they had pushed his corpse into the ooze behind the parapet of the trench. Slinger nearly losing the fingers of his right hand to a sniper somewhere out in no man’s land. 2 inches to the left and he could have said farewell to his chances of ever being a great flamenco guitarist, and hello to the possibility of gangrene or even bleeding to death. Though for an Immortal that would have been unlikely but not totally impossible.
This event had lead to a rather untypical outburst. Slinger shouting at the top of his voice into the emptiness and desolation between the trenches.
“Goddam you ! I didn’t come here to fight in your bloody war! Don’t shoot at me. Listen to me. Schweinhundt! I don’t want to be here. I’m here by accident.”
“So are they all. So are they all”, the Horse had replied.
She was shocked at the violence of her friend’s response. Usually so cool and contained, a few days in the squalor and damp of the trench had not done much for his self-control. War, she reflected, was not good for the human character.
“Horse. Will you just shut up or at least figure out how to get us out of here.”
She had considered it best to say nothing, rather than point out that it was his smart thinking and “listen, we can’t just wait here till something happens. We have to act my friend, and I have a plan. 100% foolproof” This good plan of his had lead to them spending the last two…..no, nearly three days and nights sitting in mud, rats and dead bodies in the middle of a field somewhere in the Loire valley, though she had not been able to work out exactly where they were . Probably in the front run of trenches in the Northeast sector of the English and Canadian lines near Montauban. Even her detailed knowledge had not helped to plot their precise position.
The dates she was sure of and, as she had already informed Slinger on two occasions, tomorrow, being July the 13th, the Germans would begin a massive and murderous overnight bombardment of the English, French and Canadian lines with heavy artillery. Then, at 06.00 hours precisely they would launch a huge counter attack resulting in them briefly regaining 75 yards of so called No Man’s land and overrunning all trenches in the front three lines of the allied defences, including the trench in which they now found themselves. Though ‘found’ was hardly the word for it, their method of arrival had been slightly more dramatic than mere discovery. But more of that another time.
However as the Horse had also told Slinger the next time that she mentioned it, this was not to be just another futile gaining of a few yards of shattered tree stumps and bloated corpses. It was to signal a brief and exciting departure in the whole style of the war.
“ Mobility. Briefly it’s true, but it’s something that hadn’t happened on the western front for the previous two and a half years. After total stalemate and bloody trench warfare with hundreds of thousands of lives lost on all sides to win just a few acres of land, the war was about to enter a new and mobile phase. Admittedly it would soon revert to the daily grind of trench warfare and it would be nearly a year before this kind of mobility led to a final victory for the Allies, but think of it Slinger, we are here at a crucial turning point. The Germans may not know it now but they are creating a blueprint that will be used as a model to bring the whole dreadful business to an end in 1918. Of course Clausewitz might have argued….”
“ Jesus Horse, to think I used to like you! How can you talk like that…..If the goddam Germans, Zulus or Vietcong, overrun this trench while we’re in it do you think they’re going to say “Oh hi there. Sorry you’re here. We realise that there’s been a bit of a temporal mistake, some kind of serious chronological malfunction. We’ll just pretend we didn’t see you and not bother bayoneting you viciously to death with multiple thrusts to the belly, while shooting this horse in the head and then cutting it up for delicious steaks to share with our victorious comrades”. We’re going to get killed. Unless of course you’re wrong. Are you? Tell me, that for once in your life you’re actually wrong”
The Horse was not able to lie to him, it not being in her nature.
“I’m afraid not”
She had hoped he would have picked up on the irony in her account of the coming German assault and in her discourse on military tactics, but she was sure of the facts. Slinger was right and, unless something happened in the next 24 hours, something out of the ordinary, the kind of scenario he had outlined could well come to pass.
The first time she had mentioned the matter of the forthcoming German assault to her erstwhile rider and best friend, whose notorious strength of character, determination and level headedness under conditions which most humans would find impossible had been seriously undermined by daily life in a frontline trench, Slinger had suggested that they leave immediately and head back towards the “Allied lines to the rear”.
This was a phrase he had picked up while reading war comics in a café on 32nd street in New York during the 1950s.
Her reply had been along the lines of three possible outcomes to this course of action namely:-
• They could get shot in the back by German snipers and machine gunners.
• They could get shot in the chest, head or other parts of their anatomy by French, Canadian or English firing squads organised by officers and NCOs none too happy to see their own men and horses going the wrong way at such a crucial point in the campaign.
• They could get blown to bits by the numerous mines and booby traps in the trenches and open ground between here and the rear lines of the allied forces.
Slinger, unable to argue with such irrefutable logic, had muttered something about hiding in the mud when the attack came.
In fact, the Horse thought, this wasn’t such a bad idea and had stored it in her memory as a last ditch possibility.
So it was, after another sleepless night, that she sat contemplating her friend as the sun, somewhere high above the grey cloud and mist that rolled over the trenches, tried to give some impression of morning. His Stetson pulled over his eyes, his scarf round his face to keep the flies out of his mouth and nose and his mud covered boots made of the finest Mexican leather peering out from the bottom of the dead German from Hamburg’s coat in which he was wrapped. Sleeping like an angel. He looked quite appealing, even with the rat trying to chew his boots.
Really quite appealing. Or maybe she meant appalling. There were words in human she still had problems with, though on the whole her pronunciation was impeccable, particularly late 19th Century American.
Appallingly appealing perhaps. He certainly needed a shave but when asleep…….How was it she mused, that no matter what state he was in during the day, whatever dangers and foes he might have to face, he always slept so peacefully. Wherever and with whomever he shared bed, floor or campfire.
You remember that film, the one where Henry Fonda plays the bad guy for a change, the evil outlaw desperado, but all the way through you can’t quite believe it because you know it’s Henry Fonda, and really he is the good guy, he just must be. However much he swears and drinks and does awful things to the women, you know that underneath it’s still Henry Fonda.
That was how Slinger was, first thing every morning, his face hard and cruel and good looking as hell and when he opened those eyes, those steel grey blue eyes would……
The Horse realised that he had opened his eyes and was looking at her. He yawned slowly, stretched and pushed himself upright.
He had slept all night wedged between two of the huge wooden posts that held the trench together. Under an overhang where the water only dripped rather than poured into the trench, the only part of their temporary home that wasn’t so wet and sodden that even the lice had left in disgust.
The Horse didn’t mind too much where she slept. Not that her ancestors had slept in muddy fields unlike some species of hrossa she could think of. But the genetic line was similar and though the weather was hardly going to make one tear off one’s battle dress and sunbathe in the quagmire, at least it wasn’t cold. Not that she had got any sleep to speak of, though he didn’t even offer her so much as a “Sleep well then?”
“Listen, I’m sorry about the last couple of days. Any chance of some breakfast?”
Yawn. Stretch. Kick the rats out the way. Keep your head low and move along the trench. Sit down next to her.
“I know I’ve been a real pain to be with since we got here. It’s just that……..I screwed up. There. I’ve said it. This whole mess we’re in is entirely my fault and I don’t know how to get us out of here. When I’m in a tight spot I’ll usually fight like… like….”
“A cornered rat?” the Horse suggested helpfully, eyeing a large black one that was watching them intently.
“What? No, not exactly. I was thinking of something more poetic…nobler…like….Jesus! I just remembered! You’ve reminded me. The strangest thing Horse…..my dream. I dreamt…..let me get this right….Rats. The trench was full of them. I know there are lots of them here, but in this dream there were thousands, millions of them and….”
The Horse is only half listening to him. She is paying slightly more attention to the large black rat only a few yards from them. It is sitting on the parapet above the trench, perched on top of a burst sandbag, drinking rainwater that has collected in a discarded French helmet. As it drinks it watches them. Its small red eyes flicking between them as if it too is listening to Slinger’s dream.
“Are you listening to me, and ….any chance of some food? So there’s all these rats see and they’ve got uniforms on….like French, German, Canadian, and English soldiers, but their rats, not humans. Their goddam rats and then….and then…shit I can’t remember what happens next….dammit I’m sure it’s important!”
“Maybe not. Often mere word and image association. Or do you want me to hazard some sort of interpretation. As for breakfast, there’s not a lot of choice. We ate the last of the dead German’s dried rations for supper. Of course if you’re really hungry there’s always the rats”
As she made this remark, the large black rat raised itself onto it’s back legs, stood silhouetted for a moment against the blue sky, let out a high pitched shriek and disappeared over the top of the sandbags in the direction of the trenches to their rear, closely followed by the rest of the rats .
“Rats? No I’m not that hungry. I thought you were a vegetarian”
“I didn’t say what I was going to eat. Anyway it’s not really a practical possibility, as you may have noticed the rats just left, so fricassee of rat for breakfast is out of the question”
Blue Sky.
Yes, she had seen blue sky behind that big rat as it was leaving. Her eyes followed the line of the shattered trench support upwards and, hallelujah, praise the lord and pass the ammunition, the sun was breaking through the grey blanket of cloud and mist. A small patch of blue was beginning to form right over ‘their’ trench. Slinger too had noticed it and for the moment the final elusive details of his dream seemed forgotten.
“Hey Horse. The clouds are clearing. Looks like it’s going to be a lovely day. First decent weather we’ve had since we got here. Could be a sign. Maybe it’ll be OK. Everything will be just fine.”
He turned towards her and smiled.
“Like I said, I’m sorry I’ve been a bit.......a bit down lately. Just not used to this kind of situation. Stuck in a trench, in somebody else’s stupid war, not knowing who’s shooting at you or why. Just not my sort of fight. But don’t worry, I’ll get us out of this one. Yeah it’s definitely a sign. That’s what this blue sky is. A sign that from now on things are going to get better. It’ll be OK. What do you say my friend?”
He paused, scratched his stubble and affectionately stroked her wet and soiled mane.
Something the Horse had noticed about humans was that the deepest emotional traumas could suddenly be turned around on the smallest pretext. Events and circumstances that had perfectly logical and natural causes could become signs and portents for puny human schemes or explanations for the inexplicable and implacable unfolding of events. Somehow the multi-coloured palate of the cosmos had to be painting crucial scenes in their oh so important stories rather than just being the way things were.
Of course she didn’t actually say any of this to him. Even for an Immortal with his life experience, hope could do wonderful things and, she had to admit, strange coincidences sometimes happened.
“Sure. It’s turning out to be a lovely day. So………why don’t we compose some Haiku?” she suggested.
“What?”
“Why not? We’re stuck here for the moment. So far neither of us has come up with a way of leaving here without being blown to pieces. In the absence of food, drugs or light hearted sexual encounters we could sharpen our attention and consciousness by dcontemplating the beauty of Nature and the unity of Universal Mind through the medium of traditional Japanese poetry”
His cold grey eyes travelled across the long graceful slope of his friend’s profile. Her face, once white with it’s beautiful mane of silver grey, now stained and muddied by rain, soil and blood. Those soft ears, silky black beneath the brown encrusted dirt. Her bright green eyes looking out at him, moist and smart, making him feel, in spite of all they had seen and lived through together, that he knew only a fraction of what was behind them.
He stared at her long and hard. The way she had seen him stare in those awful moments before his blurred left hand dealt swift death.
“ Dammit Horse, I never met any creature that was half as strange as you”
He threw his head back and laughed into the blue sky. The first time she had seen him laugh like that since they arrived in this trench.
At that moment the sun burst through the clouds. Great rays of light that seemed to redeem the scenes of destruction around them.
“ Why not. It sure beats sitting in this shit hole feeling sorry for ourselves. OK. I’m in. What’s the theme? But you go first. Right?”
One thing had puzzled her ever since their sudden arrival in this awful place and that was the cows.
The trench in which they had spent the last 48 hours or more extended nearly a hundred yards to the right of where she and Slinger were sitting. All around them the landscape had ceased to exist. A flattened zone of total desolation. No trees, no grass. The only living things she had seen were the rats and flies that fed on the corpses. She knew that there were humans apart from Slinger in the vicinity, due to the discharge of mortars, machine guns and heavy artillery at regular intervals during the day and night. Though she had yet to see any of them.
But only a few hundred yards from the far end of ‘their’ trench was a bright emerald raised upon a hill amidst the brown and grey sludge of war. A tiny green field. Neatly surrounded by a wicker fence. And in that field was a small herd of black and white Friesian cows.
She had tried to discuss this anomaly with her friend but without any real response from him. He was too involved in their own predicament to speculate on the reasons for the cows’ survival. The Horse, however, had a theory about them, as she had about most things. It was this:
The cows certainly belonged to a French farmer.
The cows were Friesians. They were of good German milk producing stock.
So the Germans wouldn’t shoot them because they were Friesians and the French wouldn’t shoot them because they were French Friesians belonging to a Frenchman.
Why nobody had stolen them or why they had not been cut into thousands of pieces by shrapnel or bombs she had yet to work out. She was sure there was an explanation for that, as there was an explanation, of sorts, for most things.
But there it was, or rather there they were, in that little patch of perfect grass surrounded by a perfect fence. She had yet to see anyone milk them but assumed this must happen. Probably at night, in that still hour between darkness falling and the first flares giving warning of suicidal night patrols, machine gun stutter and artillery bombardment.
“Cows and………Sky”
“Are you serious? Couldn’t we have something a little more in line with our situation?”
The Horse rose slowly from her favourite “fore legs folded in front and back legs sort of tucked behind” sitting down and resting position to stand in front of him. Being careful of course to keep her head down below the level of what remained of the sandbags.
“No. That’s it. You said I could choose the theme and I’m sticking to it. Cows and Sky”
“OK. Non standard form?”
“If you like”
“How long we got?”
“Until sunset. If that’s all right with you?”
“Fine”.
He shrugged off his overcoat. The early morning chill was fast evaporating as the last low lying wraiths of mist began to disperse in the growing heat of the day. He stood beside her, his black hair falling over the collar of his button up white vest, stained with sweat and blood as were his faded blue jeans. His face unshaven, tanned and slightly lined.
“Till sundown then”
For the whole of that July day the two companions composed themselves and their haiku.
Slinger paced, half crouching, up and down the length of the trench, occasionally tripping on the remains of the wiring of a long defunct field telephone system. Cursing beneath his breath. Trying to focus his mind on the task they had set themselves. Reflecting on those who had occupied this place before them.
What friendships, what fears, what hungers and desires had flourished and fallen in these small earthworks? What lives had been here and how had death taken them?
Bring your attention back
No distractions.
Clear the mirror of the mind.
Sometimes he sat cleaning and polishing his Colt 45s (1873 deluxe model) with their silver barrel and slightly worn but perfect mother of pearl inlaid handles.
Sky and Cows. Cows and Sky.
The Horse stood, relaxed, eyes closed. Her right front leg slightly bent over the left. Leaning gently against the side of the trench. Her back legs taking most of her weight. Appearing to be asleep, while the day drifted away around them.
There was no fighting during the hours of daylight. No point in making attacks against an enemy who could see your every move. However eager the generals and politicians were for victory they had learnt from two and a half years of slaughter that night time or the early hours of the morning were the best and most effective moments to launch attacks.
Only the sound of a snipers shot against some incautious head with helmet raised too high above the trench parapet broke the lazy buzzing of flies and the occasional lowing of cows. High above in the clear sky a solitary lark sang and the sound of a biplane on some reconnaissance or bombing mission droned into the distance.
Way back in the German lines someone was playing a cracked recording on a wind up gramophone that kept getting stuck.
Mein eine lily marl…marl..marl
Kick
Leena…
Mein ein lily marl…marl…marl..
Kick
Leena….
Again and again and again.
A perfect summer’s day.
The day passed and the sun sank slowly behind them. The sky now completely empty of clouds and mist. Far out away on the horizon in the East beyond the Kaiser’s massed armies huge swirls of grey, white and black cumulonimbus heads were beginning to build. Stained red, pink and gold by the last moments of the day.
Slinger and the Horse sat facing each other in the drying mud at the bottom of the trench. Cross legged, he drank deeply from the helmet that the rat had earlier used. The water tasted slightly acrid though he knew it was fresh. Rain had filled it that morning in the dawn downpour. He held it up to the Horse who rested on her rear haunches, her legs stretched flat on the ground. A classic pose of man and beast.
She drank deeply.
“OK Horse. You first.”
She stopped for a moment and looked at him. His face already beginning to disappear into the fast growing twilight. Lank hair falling across his forehead.
“One moment. Let me finish my drink”
He watched her as she sucked the last drops of water from the helmet. How in the name of Achilles had he got them into this mess. If only he’d listened to Dorothy when she’d suggested…..
“I’m ready. Let’s do it now”
Eye contact. Breathing slow and regular. The darkness growing amongst them. Seconds stretching into minutes. Then she spoke.
“Trees
Flaming red
Grey rain
On silent cows”
A short pause. Night had now come completely between them. Invisible to each other. The Horse concentrates on that point where she knows his face to be.
Slinger speaks.
“Cows
Against blue sky
Storm clouds
Gather”
A long silence.
The Horse spoke first.
“I like them both”
“Some of the best we’ve done I think. Perfect balance between physical reality and transcendent meaning”
“If you say so”
Another silence. Then she spoke again
“The storm clouds. Did you put them in later? After you saw them building out there in the East”
“Hell no. That was the first image I got. The sky. I kept getting it blue but…No. The storm clouds were always there.”
“It shouldn’t be sentimental”
“You know me. I hate that sort of nonsense.”
“Usually I would agree, but the last few days, you’ve been acting very…. I have to say it….sentimentally”
“You’re right. It’s like I said this morning. This place just gets to me. So much death. A mass grave with no way out,,,,,, and I got us here.”
“See. You’re doing it again. War is always like this. It’s awful. Death in its every detail. Wake up Slinger. It’s no different wherever it happens. This is the worst thing that you lot do to each other. Getting all worked up about it isn’t going to help us one bit and it’s certainly not going to stop this war. We really have no place here you know”
“Jesus. Why are you always so goddam righteous, anyone would think that you……damn there I go again”
The darkness between them lit by a flare arching up into the night sky above the German trenches. A bright light that drifts slowly down to the ground.
She can see him, his chin resting on his clasped hands. Elbows on knees. Face thrust forwards towards her. Receding again as the single flare dies, accompanied by a lone gunshot sounding into the blackness out beyond the barbed wire.
“You’re right” she says. “Probably amongst the best we’ve done”
The darkness and silence grows deeper and more profound between them. His voice comes out towards her, as if from a great distance. Their faces suddenly appearing from the darkness by an outpouring of illumination from the German lines.
“That’s it! I remember the rest of my dream. I know how we’re going to get out of here!”
“Great” said the Horse “About time one of us had a good idea”
The flares rose in their hundreds as the German artillery started up and the very gates of hell burst open.
Cut to long high shot of trenches and battlefield with shattered trees in foreground and destroyed landscape stretching out beyond. All lit by oranges and yellow flashes of light from countless artillery pieces.
Sound of artillery building till almost unbearable and then cut sound.
Freeze frame of battlefield for a couple of seconds then cut to black.